In present construction of buildings, pipes, hoses, wiring, and vents are often used throughout the home to hold or transport materials or fluids, including water and sewage, to desired locations in the building. In the case of conventional piping systems, they are often constructed from metal (including cast iron and copper) acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polyvinylchloride (PVC) piping, or cross-linked polyethylene (PEX), for instance. Unfortunately, however, these pipes are generally affixed in a haphazard manner to the framing structure of the building using current construction methods. For example, in residential home construction, the pipes are often simply affixed to the nearest piece of building frame, using manually cut pieces of wood, timber, steel rods, or plates in order to bridge the gap between the location of the pipe and the nearest piece of framing to which the pipe can be affixed. In high rise construction, the pipes are affixed to structural members using metal bridging which is specifically cut and purchased for pipe support.
However, because of the lack of structure or arrangement in how the pipes are attached to the building frame or building structure, and the fact that pipes need to be positioned in particular locations throughout the building for proper transport of the fluids, undesirable complications or situations often arise. For example, pipes that are required to be run vertically may not be positioned near a vertical structural member of the frame of the building along which it can be run. As a result, to support the vertically running pipe, additional structural members will need to be fabricated or cut in order to attach and brace the vertical pipe to the nearest structural member. This fabrication requires additional materials, time for fabrication or cutting of these additional structural members, and occupies the time of tradespeople who could otherwise be doing other work, thereby saving construction costs.
Furthermore, some piping is most effective when positioned in association with other pipes. For example, the hot, cold and drain pipes of a typical pedestal or lavatory sink are intended to be aligned in a particular fashion, and oriented and arranged with respect to each other in a particular arrangement. These three pipes are often run vertically along or parallel to the frame of the house. When they reach their destination where the lavatory sink is to be located, these three pipes often bend ninety degrees from the vertical to run perpendicular (to the floor) and pass horizontally through the drywall underneath the sink and under the pedestal before being connected to the hot, cold, and drain connections of the faucet and sink bowl, respectively.
The particular arrangement of these three pipes, with the hot and cold pipes above and to the left and right, respectively, of the drain pipe, is often difficult to achieve with three individual pipes. Each pipe has to be manually spaced as it passes horizontally through the wall to end up under the pedestal of the sink, and it is very typical for the three pipes to pass through the drywall in an uneven or asymmetrical manner. This can then lead to problems hooking the pipes to the sink faucet, and the installation being unsightly, especially where the pedestal sink is not a closed one and the piping is visible.
Certain manners of positioning and supporting piping during storage and transport are known, including as disclosed in, for example, Canadian patent number 2229469 entitled “Apparatus for Supporting Pipes” invented by Volkrad Schneider, which discloses a supporting device that can be cost effectively manufactured, that is light, and that can be used universally for positioning stored and transported piping. However, this disclosure supports pipe segments during transport or storage only, and is not intended to have any role in supporting or affixing pipes to building frames when those pipes are in use.
There is thus a need for an apparatus that can hold or support pipes easily, quickly, and while overcoming the disadvantages described above.
To overcome the aforementioned disadvantages it would be desirable to have an apparatus to help arrange and support piping, hoses, wiring, or vents that are run through buildings, including new build high rises and low rise residential housing. Such an apparatus should preferably be easy and inexpensive to fabricate, inexpensive to the end user, simple to use for the tradespeople and homeowners who will use them, and adjustable.